Elliot is back, so too is the high-wire filmmaking and haywire plot.

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Warning: This post contains minor spoilers for episode one of Mr. Robot's third season, which started last night.

The trailer for Mr. Robot S3.

Mr. Robot seems to know we all need CliffsNotes at this point. Wait, what’s Stage Two again? How does this character know that character? Its Season 3 premiere largely throws audiences a bone with some table-setting, reintroducing us to the main players as they pick up the pieces in the aftermath of various Season 2 twists. Remember, the FBI snagged Darlene, Elliot got shot, Angela agreed to help the Dark Army, power outages ran rampant in NYC, et al. So resist the urge to pause and head to Wikipedia, and Sam Esmail and co. will reward you with ample in-episode reminders.

Based on last night’s first hour ("eps3.0_power-saver-mode.h"), everything still seems to be revolving around the ominous Stage Two on a macro-plot level. As we learned late last season, Elliot (well, technically Mr. Robot) devised an attack with Tyrell and the Dark Army where E-Corp's paper records will disappear via massive explosion, thus completing his anarchistic goals to destroy the digital shackles maintaining wealth inequality. It turns out the femtocell Elliot programmed for Darlene (that Angela sneaked into an FBI temporary camp) didn't aspire to capture evidence of the bureau’s snooping, instead it was meant for hacking E-Corp. And now Mr. Robot/Elliot/Tyrell/the Dark Army believe they can fill a skyscraper with hydrogen and cause the transformers inside to light the fuse—Elliot’s Batman-like no-kill ethos be damned. (As an aside: that was tech advisor Ryan Kazanciyan’s favorite S2 hack, and it took a week-plus to sort out, as he told us on our on-hiatus Decrypted podcast. Kazanciyan has already outlined his work from S3 premiere if interested.)

This being Mr. Robot, of course things will only become more complicated than that. The premiere makes it clear Elliot and Mr. Robot have different goals, and not every major player appears to be aware of that. Expect S3 to really drive home how complicated life can get when everyone from your childhood best friend to an omniscient leader of an international hacking ring seems aware of your condition to varying degrees and tries to leverage it in pursuit of their own interests. Phew.

But if you’re still following along with Mr. Robot after a hit-and-miss S2, chances are plot isn’t the only (or even the most important) thing keeping you around. And luckily, based on screening some of this season’s early episodes, the show continues to deliver on a lot of other fronts even if its story can feel stretched at times.

Come for creativity, stay for Cannavale

Immediately, the show’s unique visual flair welcomes viewers back. Power-outage-stricken NYC looks particularly grim and helps bits of neon (from BBQ shop lights or hacking competition scoreboards) really pop early on, establishing a color palette unlike anything else on TV. Esmail continues to find camera angles others don’t, too. One particularly notable sequence starts our vantage point with a tight shot on Whiterose within an E-Corp nuclear facility, gradually raises us skyward to look down upon a dark NYC building, then seamlessly transports us into the retina of one Elliot Alderson (all while a Julie Andrews' version of “Whistling Away” artfully scores it). If the aesthetic keeps you watching, there’s no sign of Mr. Robot’sinnovative filmmaking slowing down here.

Don’t worry. The hacking ambition and technical detail that attracts such a devoted Internet following returns as well. We see Elliot stumble upon a Def Con CTF (capture the flag) competition still taking place between global collectives despite the city being without power for a week (“A CTF tournament, hacker Olympics,” Elliot thinks. “The entire city is suffering an energy crisis while they’re here exercising their inner-anarchy”). And even in this first episode, Mr. Robot rewards those who have followed security news in the past year—I can’t think of another car chase that ends like that in recent memory.

Further Reading

The show also maintains its sense of humor (Alf killed someone on-screen last year, remember) despite only deepening its dark, dark portrait of society and human nature. Elliot roams the streets in a Josh Groban t-shirt at one point; Whiterose still holds her associate’s figurative hands as she dazzles them with wordplay. And while Leon’s love for Seinfeld is nowhere to be found yet, new addition to the cast Bobby Cannavale steps in as a delightfully “too much” fixer for the Dark Army this season.

Cannavale’s character has a constantly detached calm combined with a know-it-all smugness, kinda like that old Jason Sudeikis character on SNL (right down to the Bluetooth headset) but more threatening given Cannavale’s associates here. At one point he outlines the flawed logic of not getting a free shake for his loyalty card punch ‘til the next visit, only to leave the cashier with an ominous tip. “It’s not about the money, it’s the principle,” he tells her. “When we lose our principles, we invite chaos.” Given the unexpected importance new characters tend to show later in Mr. Robot seasons, we'll be monitoring this guy.

Further Reading

But in perhaps its most fascinating tradition, Mr. Robot has always been a prescient show when it comes to building its world in a way that reveals truths about ours. S1 set up an Occupy-fueled battle over inequity long before Bernie Sanders started filling arenas across the US. S2 features government hacks, crypto-ransomware gone wild, along with references to the dichotomy of ineptitude versus destructive power inside a certain would-be politician. And even though these seasons aired in 2015 and 2016 respectively, the writers’ room came up with such concepts even further in advance.

In this premiere, we get an extended monologue from Elliot that reminds us the show will continue to have plenty to say about the present even if it remains set in this semi-apocalyptic version of 2015:

“They’re having their way with us—they packaged our fight into product, turned our descent into intellectual property, televised a revolution with commercial breaks, refurbished the facts then upped the price, lobotomized us into their VR horror show,” Elliot opines in one of his signature monologues while images of Antifa and Nazis, climate change and Brexit montage-on by.

“What if instead of fighting back we cave, give away our privacy for security, exchange dignity for safety, trade in revolution for oppression? What if we choose weakness over strength?” he continues, his dialogue now spliced with audio of Donald Trump uttering “these are not the people that made our country great, these are people destroying our country” during some campaign event.

“This is what they wanted all along: for us to buy in on our worst selves, and I just made it easier for them. I didn’t start a revolution, I just made us docile enough for the slaughtering.”

In uncertain times (whether you define them through the lens of personal, political, global well-being or something else entirely), watching shows about catastrophic downfalls accented by violence can be too tedious. The real world generates enough anxiety, according to this line of thinking, so why devote any time to this? Such logic got me out of The Walking Deadlong ago, and it’ll probably have me skipping a seemingly brooding version of The Justice Leaguelater this fall.

The plot of Mr. Robot centers on chaos, destruction, and manipulation, but at this point the show’s plot may be the least of many viewers’ concerns. Mr. Robot also shows the value of portraying reality through its approach to hacking, it shows how art can still be found in even the darkest settings, and it asks viewers to grapple with potentially upsetting real-world forces (from mental illness to inequity to fascism to surveillance states and back again) through a modern-day thought experiment as opposed to one set in a galaxy far, far away. So even if we’ll likely need the Cliffsnotes again by the end, S3 of Mr. Robot initially looks to have plenty to offer those jumping in for another 12-episode ride.

First season was awesome. I realized I am not worthy of the second season so I stopped watching. Hope the third season is made for mere mortals like me. I would like to get back into it.

It sounds like the third season (based on pre air reviews of the first handful of episodes) will be much more accessible for you. You are worthy of the second season, but if you didn't like it, that's OK, you should enjoy things on your terms, not others'.

I loved season 2 and realize I'm in the minority. I don't think people don't get it so much as they are looking for something else from this show, where I am utterly enthralled by the display of Elliot's condition and utterly horrified and how closely it reflects my own mind. In addition to the economic and societal aspects of the show, the technical aspects are simply amazing and I'm in love with the camera work, the music and the acting from just about everyone.

Please give it another shot. Maybe just catch up on Season 2 with a recap, but this first episode was very intriguing in the right ways.

Bobby Cannavale as "Winston Wolf" is a great way to add some levity while also adding some menace beneath the surface.

I stuck with it through Season 2, but I can't say I remember much other than the prison thing. The show tends to move ahead without reinforcing anything -- I guess they assume the audience is using supplemental media -- if you are watching without it, you can feel pretty lost.

I often find some of the season 2's criticism to be lazy. I totally enjoyed it and while I understand opinions differ I do think this is one of the cases where people want instant pay dirt; we have no patience anymore.

S2 built itself nicely but slowly, reserving some curve balls that were truly surprising unless the fun but obvious one in S1. It was elegant and nuanced, specially with its further treatment of Elliot's condition and how it's starting to sip through the cracks. I clearly remember fans being literally mad at the series for not disclosing where Tyrell was, and I thought "why should they tell us? Let us work and wait"

I expect great things from S3 and hope it's not more "hand holding" in response to the backslash. Media should be bold and experiment (E.g. Twin Peaks)

I often find some of the season 2's criticism to be lazy. I totally enjoyed it and while I understand opinions differ I do think this is one of the cases where people want instant pay dirt; we have no patience anymore.

S2 built itself nicely but slowly, reserving some curve balls that were truly surprising unless the fun but obvious one in S1. It was elegant and nuanced, specially with its further treatment of Elliot's condition and how it's starting to sip through the cracks. I clearly remember fans being literally mad at the series for not disclosing where Tyrell was, and I thought "why should they tell us? Let us work and wait"

I expect great things from S3 and hope it's not more "hand holding" in response to the backslash. Media should be bold and experiment (E.g. Twin Peaks)

I don't think it's lazy so much as Mr Robot is a fairly ambitious show, put together in a very artistic way with a limited budget. As such, you're not going to get universal acclaim a la GoT.

I actually agree with a lot of the criticisms, I just didn't find them to do much damage to the quality of the show (at least for me). The endless door cliffhangers in S2 were a bit over the top, but that was only a problem watching week to week. The whole season didn't suffer from that, in my opinion.

You mentioned Twin Peaks, which I also love (and so does Sam Esmail), and I totally agree with the sentiment that TV should be more ambitious and bold. But Twin Peaks The Return also had plenty to criticize, but that didn't keep me from loving every minute of it week to week. You can have a perfectly crafted show like Breaking Bad that will entertain as well as create questions of morality, but that show was still pretty conventional in a lot of ways, just extremely well done. Twin Peaks and Mr. Robot are very unconventional and not everyone is into that.

Good art requires more participation from the observer than the creator, in my opinion. That's what elevates those two shows for me. You can get the overall sentiment, but a lot of things can be elevated the more you're willing to think about them.

Anyone else get a little bit of a Philip K Dick vibe from the show now? Between Angela's weird 'new world' and bringing dead family back to life and then Elliot seemingly breaking down the fourth wall to reference events unique to our world than his own... I am starting to suspect that whatever is going on will lead to some sort of multiverse-type manipulation. Like the Dark Army wishes to hack reality.

Perhaps Minister Zheng/Whiterose and Elliot/Mr. Robot are both forces at work to allow these different potentials and realities to fully exist instead of a psychological construct for the two.

“...I could blame Adam Smith for inventing modern-day capitalism in the first fucking place (...). The truth is: I’m the one to blame. I’m the problem.”

this speaks true to all of us.

to quote Foucault:

“(...) The strategic adversary is fascism (...) the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”

Anyone else get a little bit of a Philip K Dick vibe from the show now? Between Angela's weird 'new world' and bringing dead family back to life and then Elliot seemingly breaking down the fourth wall to reference events unique to our world than his own... I am starting to suspect that whatever is going on will lead to some sort of multiverse-type manipulation. Like the Dark Army wishes to hack reality.

Perhaps Minister Zheng/Whiterose and Elliot/Mr. Robot are both forces at work to allow these different potentials and realities to fully exist instead of a psychological construct for the two.

If I remember correctly, the engineer in the nuclear power plant was talking about the multiverse, but I was too captured by the composition of the shot to pay attention to the dialogue. Oh well, gotta watch the episode again I guess... :-)

I also thoroughly agree with previous commenters that great art requires participation of the audience, and Mr Robot—like the excellent "Twin Peaks the Return"—is firmly in this category for me.

I loved season 1 but season 2 was just too abstract and insane for my liking. It seemed like season 1 had a purpose but season 2 was just wandering in the wilderness, blindfolded, with concussion while drunk and only one leg...

There is no way Bernie Sanders was filling up arenas across the USA - that defies logic.. HRC was the most popular candidate in the political history of the human race! I mean - logically - that would explain my HRC beat BS in the DNC primary...

I want to watch Mr. Robot, but it's sort of all over the place. It's like barb-wire, when what I want is a thick solid thread, consistent and easy to follow. My head gets tired from watching this show.

Season 1 was cathartic and awesome. As TV goes, that was just about as good as it gets. The social commentary, the sound and pictures, the acting, the story... Just really impressive and well made.

What's lost now is the excitement and heft that the first season carried. I saw it wilting away with Season 2 and S3E1 is confirming what I was afraid of.

The story is now trailing into good-guy/bad-guy land, there's a budding romantic story. There's new characters to expand side stories.

The creators of this show I think are falling into the trap of extending a story beyond it's compelling boundaries. I wish the creators of Mr. Robot would go the way of stories like The Leftovers, or other 10-show 'short' TV series'. All shows have their flaws and I'm pretty forgiving that way. But this show is rapidly losing my attention.